Through with flu? Universal influenza vaccine on its way

Scientists have reached a breakthrough in their pursuit of a universal vaccine for flu, which includes even future deadly strains. The answer lay within the human body itself, after eluding specialists for decades.

The foundations for a possible revolutionary flu vaccine were
discovered as part of a UK study following the 2009 swine flu
pandemic.

Scientists monitored the health condition of over 300 students
and staff at the Imperial College London throughout the pandemic.
What they found, was a naturally occurring immune response in the
form of the CD8T cells, whose function it is to battle viruses.

The Sunday results were published in the journal Nature Medicine, detailing how those who
avoided being bed-ridden by the flu had a stronger presence of
CD8T cells in their blood at the start of the pandemic.

The Imperial College London’s Professor at the Heart and Lung
Institute, Ajit Lalvani, who led the study, expanded on the
crucial difference between existing methods of prevention and the
so-called ‘Holy Grail’ of vaccines he believes is on the way:

“The immune system produces these CD8 T cells in response to
usual seasonal flu… Unlike antibodies, they target the core of
the virus, which doesn’t change, even in new pandemic strains.
The 2009 pandemic provided a unique natural experiment to test
whether T cells could recognize, and protect us against, new
strains that we haven’t encountered before and to which we lack
antibodies,” Lalvani said, cited by The
Independent.

The trouble with existing vaccines is that the antibodies they
dispatch to fight viral infection only target the surface
characteristics of the infection, which are prone to adapting and
mutating. The result is newer, more devious strains and the need
to constantly upgrade the vaccine.

According to the professor, “new strains of flu are
continuously emerging, some of which are deadly, and so the Holy
Grail is to create a universal vaccine that would be effective
against all strains of flu.”

The health world is already heralding the development as the next
step in protecting the human population from deadly future
strains of flu, a disease which already kills between 250,000 and
half a million people annually, according to the World Health
Organization. The 2009 swine flu epidemic affected millions
worldwide. Flu pandemics have had a historical trend of being
devastating every time, with the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918
causing tens of millions of deaths across the globe.

News of the breakthrough comes just as the world braces itself
for another possible outbreak – the new bird flu strain, H7N9,
which made the transition from birds to humans in February of
this year, killing a fifth of the people it infected in its
native China.

However, Professor Lalvani forecasts a bright future: “We
already know how to stimulate the immune system to make CD8 T
cells by vaccination…Now that we know these T cells may protect,
we can design a vaccine to prevent people getting symptoms and
transmitting infection to others. This could curb seasonal flu
annually and protect people against future pandemics.”